At Oregon, Any Quarterback Will Do

The Oregon Ducks' High-Octane Offense Seems to Work Regardless of Who Is Playing Under Center

ENLARGE

Redshirt freshman quarterback Marcus Mariota, 19, has led the Oregon Ducks to an 8-0 record and a No. 4 ranking in the BCS standings.
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By

Rachel Bachman

Updated Nov. 2, 2012 4:05 p.m. ET

When No. 2 Oregon faces its toughest test of the season in No. 18 Southern California on Saturday, the Ducks will attempt to extend a trend that's startling for a team known for its jet-fueled offense. Oregon is trying to reach its third Bowl Championship Series bowl in four years with a completely unproven quarterback.

Oregon drove to the 2009-season Rose Bowl with quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, a junior-college transfer who began the previous season on the fifth string. In 2010 Oregon went 12-0 and narrowly lost the BCS championship to Auburn with first-year starter Darron Thomas. This year, first-year starter and redshirt freshman Marcus Mariota has the Ducks at 8-0 and No. 4 in the BCS standings. He turned 19 on Tuesday.

This isn't the way things go at programs like USC, where prep-quarterback kings ascend to illustrious, multiyear college reigns. In the past decade the Trojans have followed two Heisman Trophy-winning passers—Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart—with NFL first-round draft pick Mark Sanchez and current starter Matt Barkley, a five-star recruit turned four-year starter.

The Ducks have excelled despite a lack of blue-chip recruits and frequent quarterback turmoil. In June 2010 Oregon kicked Masoli off the team for a final-straw police citation. He transferred to Mississippi, went undrafted by the NFL and has spent time in the United and Canadian football leagues. Last January his replacement, two-year starter Darron Thomas, stunned fans by announcing he was leaving Oregon after his junior season. Thomas went undrafted and recently left the CFL's Calgary Stampeders.

Thriving at college football's top level with a new quarterback is like a freshman engineering major piloting a NASA mission: It is possible, just not very likely. The departure of quarterback Colt McCoy after the 2009-season BCS title game flummoxed Texas, which went 5-7 the next season. Ohio State dropped to 6-7 in 2011, the season after Terrelle Pryor led the Buckeyes to a 12-1 record. (The victories were later vacated.) Baylor is 3-4 this season after losing Heisman winner Robert Griffin III and his Superman socks to the NFL.

Oregon's success at quarterback starts with the player assessment of fourth-year head coach Chip Kelly, who has never had a five-star quarterback, according to Scout.com rankings. Instead, he looks for versatility and poise like that displayed at Oregon's prep summer camp by Mariota, a Hawaiian-born, three-star athlete. "It took him a week to figure out our offense," Kelly said. "That's a pretty big statement, based on all the different things we do." Kelly's instincts were right on: Mariota's completion rate (68.6%) is nearly identical to that of Alabama's A.J. McCarron (68.9%), a front-runner for the Heisman. Further proof of Kelly's capacity to judge talent? Another three-star prospect Oregon loved—and who originally committed there—was none other than Johnny Manziel, now tormenting the Southeastern Conference for No. 16 Texas A&M.

Once quarterbacks reach campus, Kelly helps them by relying on repetition, so much so that the Ducks will practice a given play hundreds of times before deploying it. "We don't run things on Saturday that we don't have full confidence in," Kelly said. This approach helps explain why Kelly's quarterbacks have thrown interceptions on just 2.3% of their passes during his tenure, 13th-best nationally in the past decade among coaches with at least two years experience, according to statistical outlet Coaches by the Numbers.

Another key to the Ducks' quarterback success: Last season Mariota practiced with Oregon's regular players rather than mimicking opposing quarterbacks on the scout team, as many redshirt quarterbacks do. "He wasn't running Arizona's offense or USC's offense," Kelly said. "He was running our offense." Kelly said he implements the strategy whenever he has enough depth to do it.

A trend working in Oregon's favor is that more high school teams also run some form of the spread offense, said former Oregon and NFL quarterback Joey Harrington, an analyst with Fox Sports. "Now, you've got grade-school kids taking snaps from shotgun," Harrington said. That increases the odds that a quarterback and the players around him are familiar with the spread before they set foot in Eugene, Ore.

Perhaps most helpful to young quarterbacks is that Oregon keeps things simple. The Ducks run four to six different running plays per game, Kelly said, changing them from week to week only to adjust to opposing defenses. Nate Costa, a former Oregon quarterback working as a TV analyst and quarterback instructor, estimated that the Ducks have used less than half of their playbook this season. Oregon merely disguises what it's doing with shifts and motions—and runs people ragged with its hurry-up, no-huddle style.

"The funny part about it is, people are still unable to stop those plays," Costa said. "The pace of play will always get people."

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